My original intent for this blog was to sound my barbaric yawp. Then I did not. I thought, then, I might explore other voices. I started because my barbaric yawp sounded on Face Book. They are getting a little tired of my yawping there, and perhaps I need a longer form here, and perhaps I want to save the yawping. So, whatever may happen, why not? I’m a dreadfully inconsistent diarist, as well. Fortunately for posterity, I’m of no interest to them. So here is today’s Paranoid Delusion.

I have for some time been imagining a version of a Reichstag Fire: a manufactured disaster that can be used by an administration grasping for absolute power. This, in the dystopia novel in my head, would come sometime before the 2018 mid-term elections in order to provide an excuse to suspend said elections. Of course, that would be much too obvious. Something more insidious would happen, more subtle, and may already have. Then the news this morning.

I wrote:

U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel. Terrorist incidents against U.S. citizens increase to a 9/11-like incident or what might as well be a 9/11-like incident. More war-time powers granted to the executive. U.S. stands alone. In 2018 election, no candidate can win unless they are a complete hawk supporting massive increases in defense spending, thus justifying GOP tax plan and all that it will do. Chaos reigns. Chaos is a ladder. — Jeez, it’s not even 9 am yet. I really need to unplug because my sanity and my liver are at risk (for the record, I am NOT drinking at this hour).

By the time I returned home this evening, the first step had taken place. There was a reason that Mel Brooks called the anatgonists in Get Smart! KAOS. We seem to have all of the bad parts of the twentieth century concentrated into the past year, if not the past month.